Hands up who's only here because you're too short for basketball? Photo: Courtesy of Scoresports

Major League Baseball (MLB) president Bob DuPuy made a big brave promise in 2006 when he said that the league would play regular season games in China. Overseer of America's most popular game, DuPuy made an equally-brave prediction for the game here: "in a very short period of time China can do for Major League Baseball what Japan has done for Major League Baseball."

Four years on, aside from a 2010 exhibition game there's been none of the competitive season games DuPuy promised. All the while the MLB's watched the National Basketball Association pull between $50 and $100 million (340 to 680 million yuan) - depending on which US newspaper you read - out of China every year in merchandising earnings. There was of course an excuse: baseball, not basketball, was scratched from the lineup for the 2016 Olympic Games.

Olympic accreditation matters in China's sports budgets. With baseball no longer a priority for the national sports authorities who drive Chinese athletes' success, the private sector is picking up the bat. Most notable is QSL Sports, agents for major US baseball (and basketball) teams and orchestrator of the recent visit to China of a Yankees delegation brandishing the 2009 World Series trophy - the highest honor in baseball.

Youth league

From its downtown Beijing office QSL also runs the Chinese Youth Baseball League, launched last July in a three-way deal with the Baseball and Softball Management Center (part of the State Administration of Sports) and the China Baseball Administration (CBA). Founded by Chinese- American business duo of Adrian Cheng and Kenny Huang, QSL claims to have had 300 teams involved in 2009 and plans to have 1,000 by the end of this year.

Most of those teams are being fielded by local educational establishments, many of them downtown Beijing primary and high schools. A nationwide baseball tournament this year will pit against teams in age brackets from 12 to 18 against each other in the summer competitions set for Nanjing and Wuxi. The games are enthusiastically backed by Wei Shen, who runs the CBA: she said youth tournaments are the only way to grow the game here.

QSL for its efforts hopes to earn a cut off any sponsorship deals it signs to run the league.

But though it has cash and connections, QSL's not the only operation seeing a commercial chance in the growth of baseball in Beijing.

Only two years in business, Scoresports claims to have the largest ballpark in the country in its Baseball Farm located in Shunyi. The Taiwanese-invested firm has teamed with the municipal commission of education, through which it cooperates with the No.3 Middle School, a gilded institution attached to the city's Normal University.

Encouraging the development of local teams is in Scoresports' interest as it earns fees for use of its grounds. Talented primary students get picked by premier high schools - it also has ties to Wanquanhe Middle School, a North Communications University establishment, explained the company's sales manager Xia Yi. He said local parents are keen on getting their kids into the schools the firm works with. Baseball, he said is a vehicle to good schools is one way to go but Scoresports also earns fees from teams, who pay to use its fields.

Turbulent history

A day on one of the two baseball fields costs 5,000 yuan ($732) an hour or 1,500 yuan for three hours. A coach (he used to play on the Chinese national team) costs 200 yuan an hour. Walker, who calculates there are currently 50 baseball teams in Beijing, most of them representing foreign firms and embassies, "though much of the players are Chinese."

It's encouraging to see the Shunyi ballpark doing well, because in baseball infrastructure Beijing has lost the initiative to Xiamen, which has been marked by the sports administration as training base for the national team. Hurting the feelings no doubt of Beijing's baseballers, the Wukesong stadium is being dismantled and shipped to the China Xiamen International Baseball Exchange Center. The city got the nod for geography - planners are hoping to get tourism dollars from visitors coming from baseball-mad Taiwan.

But baseball has had a turbulent history in the capital. Things picked up for Chinese baseball in 2002, when the first official professional China Baseball League was formed. Beijing Tigers, who play out of the city's Lucheng Field in Daxing, are second in the North/West region league - a point behind leaders Tianjin Lions, and a good stretch ahead of third-placed Sichuan Jiaolong. But none of the trio comes close to leaders of the South/East leagues: the league's Guangdong team has racked up 42 points from the season.

Encouragingly the league is growing, both in number of clubs involved and length of the season. Perhaps the best-named team (and the latest to join) in the competition, the Henan Elephants, who play at Henan Ball Games Administration Center Baseball Field in Zhengzhou. Beijing Tigers have dominated the early years of the competition, usually at the expense of the Tianjin Lions, though the latter had a run of luck in capturing the title for three straight years from 2006, before the Lions came back and grabbed the glory in 2009 in a tight win over the Guangdong Leopards.

Gaining popularity

None of the teams are likely contenders for the Major League but they're watched closely by US baseball czars. There's of course an easy explanation for US interest. MLB hopes to leapfrog to popularity in China with a silver bullet: a Chinese talent. Hence sports fans here, goes the reasoning, will tune in like they do in Japan, where Hideki Matsui's heroic performance for the Yankees last autumn was loudly celebrated. His team-mate and pitcher Chien-Ming Wang is an icon in Taiwan.

The only problem: China may no longer be interested, since baseball has been scratched from the Olympics, the country's all powerful sports administration doesn't see building stadiums as a priority. For all the gloom though, baseball isn't necessarily new to China.

True, basketball had a headstart, not being censored the way baseball was post-1949. Yet baseball goes back to 1863, when Shanghai formed the country's first baseball club. At the turn of the 20th century China was placing second to the Philippines in a Greater Asia tournaments. In 1959 teams from 30 Chinese regions competed for a national title. But since baseball was seen as too western for a Communist land, all went quiet on the diamond and the country's baseball fields were ploughed up.

That was until 1986, when then owner of the Dodgers, Peter O'Malley, helped build a new stadium in Tianjin - the word was Deng Xiaoping had grown fond of the game during an official visit to the US - and a couple of years later a Little League championship was started.

China has a blotchy record in international competition. In the 2006 World Baseball Classic, organized by the MLB, the Chinese mainland lost all three of its games, including a 12-3 outing against Taiwan. Yet that matters little to closely-watching MLB teams, one of which, the Seattle Mariners, plucked possible star, Wang Wei, the most positive thing about China's showing in the 2006 competition.

Delivering promises

MLB's formidable war chest and marketing skills may return Chinese baseball to its earlier health. But not any time soon. Apart from branded clothing sold to local cool kids, it's not been able to up sales of equipment: try finding a baseball bat/ball in most local sports stores.

Considering the revenues it sees at stake, no one at the MLB is giving up. Touring the World Series trophy around China, Yankee's president, Randy Levine, and general manager, Brian Cashman promised, again, to set up baseball academies across China and sent trainers and coaches to work with the Chinese athletes.

There have been many promises. There's a patchwork of agreements and hook-ups in place to find the elusive Yao of baseball. It's questionable how realistic are the plans for a tournament involving hundreds of schools playing on dozens of new fields, certainly given the timeline offered by QSB. True, one of its executives in China, Mark Ganis, said he sees the venture taking a decade to deliver on its goals.

But this could prove detrimental to the game's long-term health here if the US teams are only interested in snatching up Yao Ming-type prospects and taking them to the US, rather than helping groom a sustainable baseball league and scene locally. Scoresports' Walker meanwhile is preparing to host four touring teams from Taiwan this summer. "There's more baseball tourism, teams who'd like to play a game in China."

gaofumao@globaltimes.com.cn